Zombra
An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Trying out this 2007 detective story for the first time.
I love the detective mechanics, combining clues, the acting is good, the story is interesting. Even the endless screens of walking back and forth are beautiful (if worthless).
There are a few things that are making this a huge pain in the ass to play.
* Navigation. Finding my way around is a fucking nightmare. It took me a half an hour of trying to find the kitchen before I gave up and looked for a walkthrough. Turns out the second floor isn't connected to itself. The heliport does not seem to exist at all, yet critical characters are said to be hiding there. Every room takes up 5 different screens, and you can't see someone sitting 10 feet away unless you find the correct screen to locate them. There is no up, down, north, or south, just "click here to go somewhere else ... maybe". Has anyone charted out some kind of map to this place?
* The Adventure Game Pixel Hunt Problem. No key to highlight interactive elements? Oh look, that patch of sand, which appears identical to every other patch of sand, is actually different from every other patch of sand and contains critical information, yet there's no way for me to know this unless I drag my cursor over every pixel in the game. What the fuck.
* The Adventure Game Interaction Problem. I need graphite powder. I have a graphite pencil. There is no evident way to do anything with it. I can't just step on it to grind the graphite into powder, because of course I can't. I'm sure I have to find the one cat hair mustache pixel in the 2000 rooms in the game to push the pencil against, but jesus damn it.
As with 100% of bad adventure games everywhere, it's not about solving the problem or figuring things out, but having the very pieces be impossible to find.
Explorerbc? IHaveHugeNick? cvv? Should I just say "fuck it" and use a walkthrough? Or better yet just watch it on youtube since that would be no different? Or are there tools to make the experience not terrible?
I love the detective mechanics, combining clues, the acting is good, the story is interesting. Even the endless screens of walking back and forth are beautiful (if worthless).
There are a few things that are making this a huge pain in the ass to play.
* Navigation. Finding my way around is a fucking nightmare. It took me a half an hour of trying to find the kitchen before I gave up and looked for a walkthrough. Turns out the second floor isn't connected to itself. The heliport does not seem to exist at all, yet critical characters are said to be hiding there. Every room takes up 5 different screens, and you can't see someone sitting 10 feet away unless you find the correct screen to locate them. There is no up, down, north, or south, just "click here to go somewhere else ... maybe". Has anyone charted out some kind of map to this place?
* The Adventure Game Pixel Hunt Problem. No key to highlight interactive elements? Oh look, that patch of sand, which appears identical to every other patch of sand, is actually different from every other patch of sand and contains critical information, yet there's no way for me to know this unless I drag my cursor over every pixel in the game. What the fuck.
* The Adventure Game Interaction Problem. I need graphite powder. I have a graphite pencil. There is no evident way to do anything with it. I can't just step on it to grind the graphite into powder, because of course I can't. I'm sure I have to find the one cat hair mustache pixel in the 2000 rooms in the game to push the pencil against, but jesus damn it.
As with 100% of bad adventure games everywhere, it's not about solving the problem or figuring things out, but having the very pieces be impossible to find.
Explorerbc? IHaveHugeNick? cvv? Should I just say "fuck it" and use a walkthrough? Or better yet just watch it on youtube since that would be no different? Or are there tools to make the experience not terrible?